Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a list display apparatus, a list display method, and a graphical user interface, and is suitably applicable to, for example, a portable music player which lists a plurality of album titles, song titles, etc.
Description of the Related Art
A portable audio player stores a large number of pieces of song data by saving the large number of pieces of song data into separate folders of hierarchical structure.
In so doing, the portable audio player stores, for example, a plurality of pieces of song data that are associated with an album title into an album folder that has the album title as its folder name in the form of respective song files.
When searching for a song file desired by a user, as shown in FIG. 1A, this portable audio player displays an album list screen ALG including a plurality of album titles on the monitor of the portable audio player.
As shown in FIG. 1B, if an album title, e.g., “Destiny Border” is selected from the album list screen ALG, the portable audio player then displays a song list screen MLG which includes a plurality of song files (song titles) stored in the album folder that has the folder name “Destiny Border”.
In the meantime, there has been a means for displaying hierarchically structured data in a three-dimensional fashion, by which the pieces of data are distributed and arranged from upper levels to lower levels in order toward a cone bottom in a radial configuration, and are three-dimensionally displayed as a contents tree of cone shape (refer to, e.g., Jpn. Pat. Appln. Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-047778).